Rappan Athuk #5 - The Dung Monster

Yep, you read the title right.

You’ll have to read below for that bit of entertainment.

We last left the party very drained of resources, in a dungeon level whose every nook reeked of feces, with no way out of the dungeon for at least two days. Food and clothing absorbed the stench and even summoned water had didn’t taste clean.

Their only bit of good fortune was finding a room that had gone unseen by the denizens of the dungeon for a very long time, or so far as the party knows.

The reek made it hard for the party to get any real rest, but they had plenty of time to waste.

Several fortunate random encounter rolls and the next thing the party knows it’s time to get back to adventuring.

At this point the party has only directions to go for adventuring, head north down the hallway, or head south down the hallway.

This group’s general axiom for choosing directions in D&D is “Monsters to the left and treasure to the right.” Even though it means nothing, it’s certainly no worse than flipping a coin.

From their vantage, south (right) became their option and not much later they came to a large natural cavern full of rats of all sizes, dire rats. Tied to a wall was a half-elven wizard pleading for help from the party as a horde of rats were nipping at her blood-soaked clothes.

Paranoia paid off again as the party called her bluff (great Sense Motive roll vs. a pathetic Bluff roll).

When the party pulled their weapons, the lady’s expression changed to hate and anger as she commanded the rats to destroy the party. Four of the dozen dire rats in the room change shape into their humanoid were-rat form.

The two sides clash, but the party quickly obtains the advantage in spite of the nasty strength poison the rats use (1d6/2d6 strength damage with a DC24 fortitude save).

Their leader, the “damsel in distress” half-elf, who is not a wizard after all, does have a nasty trick. She has a few pouches of Dust of Sneezing and Choking and she tosses one at the party, managing to only affect one of her own dire rat minions.

Now normally I would let the combat stand as is, but this item was way too much over the top and it would have killed the entire party outright through very little of their own actions.

The dust acts like a poison if you’re caught in its area of effect – DC15 fortitude save or take 2d6 Con damage (repeated one minute later for another 1d6), but even if make the save you’re still effectively stunned for 5d4 rounds while your body coughs away. During those 5d4 rounds, those that survive can easily be picked off with the wererat’s arrows.

I changed (nerfed) the dust slightly to give the party a fighting chance. The Con damage stays, but the guaranteed stun has been replaced by not being able to do anything but move at half speed as a full round action and you face the Con damage again next round.

That seemed pretty reasonable and realistic to me, but I still got some whining.

Lousy ingrates.

The party still won, but only barely. The poison damage left Mouse with a 0 strength score. Vars was down to 1 point of Constitution thanks to the dust. In fact, after this point I don’t believe that anyone in the party doesn’t have at least one stat damaged.

Vars even got a disease from one of the rat bites, and lost 2 more Con two days later, putting him back down to 1 Con.

In spite of their victory, the half-elf managed to escape. Since her most powerful minions had all been destroyed, she hid and waited for the party to leave the area before she returned to loot what she could from the wererat’s lair, then fled, taking many rats and dire rats with her.

But that doesn’t mean the party didn’t get at least a little loot off the wererat’s bodies, but it was barely even 250gp overall.

After that they holed up in their hiding place until the next day when Mouse got back 1 point of strength so he could begin casting Lesser Restorations. He didn’t have enough to go around for everyone, but the party isn’t crippled in power now and can continue exploring and run if need be.

As they head back to the mausoleum to check on its roof-raising status, Mouse notices that his chalk signs, marking where traps are located, are now gone.

They find the mausoleum about half-way up and the sarcophagus is closed again, with no sign of the black skeleton.

With nothing for them to do other than rest, and being too weak to risk any real fighting, the party decides to dig out the collapsed room they found last session in the hopes that it is concealing an exit.

Luckily for them once again, they have no random encounters and head back to their hiding room at the end of their “work day”.

The next morning they get back to work and clear some more of the rubble away from the room, making some headway.

The third morning the party is in a much better position to deal with things, or so they thought.

Along their path from their secret room they head back north but find the largest pile of dung they had ever come across, looking as though it had just been dropped right there in their path, but no trap door was above it.

The idea of trudging through it did not appeal to the party, so they went back south a short ways to wererat territory.

The large room where the wererat fight occurred had no dire rats and about half the number of normal rats as before, all of which fled at the party’s approach.

The cavernous room had plenty of exits the party could explore, and they did.

There was an underground river they checked out. Upstream effectively dead ended unless they could breathe underwater and swim against the currents. Downstream went for quite a while, but when it got to be too deep for Mouse, they turned around.

Slam found a pathetic looking helmet that he found near a headless dwarf skeleton; only to find out later it was magical. No clue if it’s cursed though. He has to try it on first.

They found a small tunnel that was big enough for Mouse to investigate alone, and could smell some fresh air after 20’ of travel. They realized it was indeed a way out, but just for Mouse.

They found about 50gp in copper and silver in the wererat’s main lair. There had been more treasure, but someone had recently fled with it.

And finally they found some stairs leading down.

While it certainly must be comforting to know where they can go for the next dungeon level, they weren’t yet ready to leave this area. Their food was running short and didn’t want to get in over their heads just yet.

(Mouse did offer to go get the party food and leave through the rat hole, but it would require that they hand over some money to him. They understandably passed.)

The only option they’ve given themselves for travel is through giant pile of excrement.

They have a simple idea, Saver is to use his Mage Hand spell to move the pile 5 pounds at a time.

Unfortunate for them, Dungie, the living pile of (insert euphemism here), didn’t appreciate that. He was just lying there, enjoying his day, when some jerk poked him with a spell.

It slowly flopped itself towards the party and we rolled initiative.

(I used WotC’s large water elemental as Dungie’s fig.)

Round 1:

Saeri had her bow ready (paranoia pays off again) and shoots the thing with one of the poison arrows they got off the wererats. It hits, but fails to penetrate its damage resistance of 25/magic. Plus Dungie’s immune to poison anyway.

Saver casts Scorching Ray, but he fails to beat Dungie’s spell resistance of 100.

Dale: “Does everything have SR in this dungeon?!?!”

I didn’t fill them in on Dungie’s abilities just yet. Hey, I’m there to have fun too.

Vars has no magic weapon, so he backs up a bit.

Dungie slowly pulls itself forward, using a double move action to move a whole 20’

Mouse moves next to Vars and casts Magic Weapon on one of Vars’s bastard swords.

Slam wants a magic weapon too, so he gets next to Mouse to mooch that spell too.

Round 2:

Saeri wants that spell too, so she stands next to Mouse as well.

Saver takes a few steps back and casts Scorching Ray again. He fails to breach the SR.

Dungie moves forward another 20’

Vars rushes to face Dungie and hits him for 8 points of damage. As a reward he has to make a reflex save to not lose his sword in the mess that is Dungie.

Mouse casts Magic Weapon on Slam’s greataxe, then steps back some more getting a little closer to the rat cavern.

Slam rushes to face Dungie as well hitting hard for another 16 points of damage.

Round 3:

Saeri moves back to stay with Mouse.

Saver casts Magic Missile this time, but still manages to not break that SR100.

Dungie regenerates 24 points of damage right before the Vars’s and Slam’s eyes (no clue to explain that visual to them though). I then fill the party in on the DR of 25/magic, the SR100, the regeneration of 25, and the immunity to poison. And then Dungie extends a pseudopod to slam Slam. The sticky mess grabs hold of Slam, who is now partially stuck inside Dungie. (Karma in action.)

Vars runs away to the rat room where the party can hopefully maneuver around Dungie and flee from it.

Mouse runs away to the rat room.

Slam tries to break free from Dungie’s grip, but fails.

Round 4:

Saeri runs away to the rat room.

Saver casts Create Water from a distance, hoping to weaken the stickiness of Dungie. Nothing good happens. I’ll let you create your own mental image of what it actually looked like.

Dungie crushes Slam for 9 damage and resumes moving towards the party.

Slam tries to break free again but fails again.

Justin must face the onslaught of jokes and deal with a character in a bad situation. He’s the group’s low-comedy person, so I feel it’s justified.

Round 5:

Saver pulls out a vial of oil, moves up next to Slam and Dungie, and covers Slam in oil hoping to help him break free.

That tactic backfires as Dungie just rolls over on top of Saver while crushing Slam for another 6 damage.

Slam finally pulls himself free and runs away to the rat room.

Round 6:

Saver remains stuck and Dungie crushes him for 9 damage while once again chasing after the party.

Round 7:

Saver breaks free and runs to the rat room.

Over the next several minutes the party lures Dungie away from the hallway until they can safely run back to the hallway and get past where Dungie originally was.

And yes, Dungie is the name the dungeon designers named him.

There is more to the story, but I won’t tell you until I tell the group.

The party successfully makes it to mausoleum, which has fully reset from the trap.

While the rest of the party takes 20 on searching the mausoleum, Slam and Saver stay near the secret door handle mechanism in case the trap is triggered, and because they’re covered in feces from head to toe.

In spite of the thorough searching, the party finds nothing they haven’t found already. Most notably they haven’t found a way to open the main doors.

After a short while Aaron puts the pieces of this puzzle together. He has Mouse run back to the rat room (no sign of Dungie anywhere), then up the tunnels the rat’s created and out into the main graveyard.

Mouse then quickly goes to the dwarven statue, finds the iron key, darts to the mausoleum, knocks on the doors and opens them with the iron key (which teleports away).

The party flees the room, pausing just long enough to see if the ceiling lowers (it doesn’t) before the doors slam shut behind them.

After checking to see if the iron key teleported back to the dwarf statue (it did), they get the heck out of there and headed back to the village of Lhend via the quickest route, the swamp edge.

Of course they have some encounters along the way.

First is another squad of patrolling hobgoblins that eye the party but do nothing otherwise.

Then a horde of zombies crawl out of the swamp and attack the party. For sport the party kills them all, collects the XP and continues their journey.

And finally they find an unconscious man on the ground next to a dead horse, a flipped cart, and plenty of rotted fruits. After some quick investigation, they healed the man who told them he didn’t see who attacked them, and they could find no tracks. Then everyone went back to their business.

They stop before entering Lhend so the party can bathe a bit.

While in town Vars finds that his nice new bastard sword is ready and everyone stocks up on trail rations (around 10 days a piece) and other sundry equipment (possibly including shovels).

Saver manages to tick off Trake the weaponsmith for the final time when he tries to sell the lawful good dwarf 4 rapiers, one with a good coating of poison.

When the party finds that the inn is full (except for the horrid common room), they decide that they want to spend the night in the ruined tower, and possibly make the place a cache location.

It’s late, but the party feels they should be able to make it to tower.

We shall see.